THE LARGEST, MOST COMPLETE, MOST AUTHORITATIVE & ENRICHED COMPOSER SET OF ALL TIME ON 222 CDs + 1 DVD
333 years since the birth of Johann Sebastian Bach, the largest project of its kind in the history of recorded music is presented by Deutsche Grammophon in collaboration with Decca Classics, 30 other labels and the Leipzig Bach Archive.
Bach 333 presents every known note from the great master and opens up his world – and his impact on our world – in a uniquely immersive way: through audio, visual, printed and online materials.
Over 280 hours of music from 750 performers and 32 labels
10 hours of new recordings including 7 world premieres
State-of-the-art historically informed performances including the complete Cantatas from Gardiner, Suzuki, Koopman, Herreweghe, Leonhardt, Harnoncourt, Kuijken, Coin and others; plus other leading names in Bach performance such as Goebel, Hogwood, McCreesh, Mortensen, Brüggen, Pinnock, Dantone, Rousset, Alessandrini and Carmignola
Over 50 CDs of alternative recordings including modern piano performances from Schiff, Perahia, Hewitt, Argerich, Brendel and many more; plus 90 years of evolving traditions from Deller to Hunt Lieberson, Busch to Abbado, Mengelberg to Richter, Fischer to Gould, Schweitzer to Alain, Landowska to Růžičková, Casals to Fournier, Grumiaux to Mutter
Includes the latest research from the Leipzig Bach Archive’s forthcoming BWV3 catalogue
16 CDs, “Bach Interactive” and “Bach after Bach”, explore Bach’s own influences and his unique impact on the world of music since: from Mozart and Beethoven to today’s masters such as Pärt and Kurtág. Includes unique CDs devoted to jazz (Grappelli, Loussier, Evans, Getz, Peterson etc.) plus the new colours of today’s artists, composers and remixers
Limited, individually numbered edition
CONTENTS
222 CDs in four compartments (Vocal, Keyboard, Orchestral and Instrumental)
Colour-coded for easy navigation and ordered chronologically by genre
1 DVD: Bach: A Passionate Life. A 90-minute BBC film written and narrated by Sir John Eliot Gardiner
2 hardback books:
LIFE: Lavishly illustrated biography by Dorothea Schröder (new translation into English), with a Foreword by Sir John Eliot Gardiner; plus 13 new essays by leading Bach scholars
MUSIC: New essay by Christoph Wolff, 222 CDs of musical commentary by Nicholas Kenyon, many facsimiles and guide to online resources
BWV/index book (each index with specific CD references):
BWV numerical listing and chronology (informed by research for new BWV3 catalogue)
Alphabetical work index
Artist index
6 Track-listing books: Including sung texts (DE/EN) and full recording information plus specifications of over 20 historical organs
PACKAGING
2-piece rigid lift off lid box
200 x 426 x 281 mm (HxWxD) | 13.5kg

One of the very few recordings opera star Cecilia Bartoli made for Warner Classics’ former labels Teldec & Erato, apart from three Mozart operas (Cosi fan tutte and Le nozze di Figaro with Daniel Barenboim and the rare Lucio Silla with Harnoncourt).
The terrific cast also features the great tenor Christoph Prégardien and famous French soprano Patricia Petibon.
The Austrian conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt was both a specialist of Classical era and a master of opera performances.
In the early 1950s, Harnoncourt founded Concentus Musicus Wien, the first professional orchestra in Europe to play on period instruments and dedicated to music of the pre-Romantic era. As Sir Nicholas Kenyon wrote in Gramophone after Harnoncourt’s death:
“He wanted to explore why composers made their music sound as it did, to understand what their intentions were, to react to the instruments they used and to their sonorities, and to see how they could best be created anew in our time. He did not believe in ‘authenticity’ as such, and never used the word. Instead he questioned ‘tradition’ as laziness [as] Mahler had before him."

When Nikolaus Harnoncourt died in March 2016, the music world lost one of its most influential and charismatic conductors. Harnoncourt was a pioneer of historically informed performances and the repertoire is enriched for the approach it took to it. Deutsche Grammophon commemorates the first anniversary of his death in March 2017, presenting two of his legendary recordings again on vinyl.
Harnoncourt’s remarkable historically informed recordings with Gidon Kremer and the Vienna Philharmonic.
Celebrating Gidon Kremer’s 70th birthday on Feb 27, 2017.

The familiar yet unfamiliar father figure of Baroque music: he wrote orchestral suites, chamber music, operas, oratorios and cantatas, a vast output that has still not been fully explored. During his own lifetime he was hailed as one of the most prolific, versatile and innovative composers of his day: Georg Philipp Telemann. The early music movement has long held him in high regard and in recent decades has been responsible for the high-quality recordings that are the defining feature of the present collection.

As both a dynamic pioneer of historically informed performance and a musician steeped in the Viennese symphonic tradition, Nikolaus Harnoncourt – conducting the magnificent Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra – provides illuminating interpretations of Mozart’s last four symphonies. As he said in a BBC interview in 2012: “The music of Mozart … is always up to date, never old music.”